During my residency in the USA it gave me the opportunity to respond to a different culture as well as place. I explored notions of iconic items such as the brown paper bag found in stores all over America. Watching films as a child I was always enamoured by (and rather envious of) the simple brown paper bag. I researched its fascinating history of development, its political battles of design between the sexes, and its own racial segregation. I made new work by collecting hundreds of bags, drawing on them, destroying them, re-stitching and re-configuring large sheets that resembled cow hides, and then into new bags again.

I adopted several approaches to making work, using only materials that I could find locally. Thread and wire became mediums to reflect the vast fields of blacken stubs and roots of corn that surrounded the arts centre.